Why I ignore the news

I've been trying to keep my anger about certain things off the blog, because once I've gone over what makes me angry and what makes me happy, it's kind of pointless to keep bringing it up, right? Plus, it's not like I ignore the news, I just wish I could sometime. This week, unfortunately, has been kind of annoying.

1. Why are so many people more bent out of shape by the administration releasing memos acknowledging that we tortured than by the torture itself? I was arguing with Mia's PT this week about this (he's relatively conservative). He made the very good point that if Obama wants to release all the information that says we tortured, then he should be willing to release all the information that indicates what information we actually extracted from those we tortured. It's ironic that Chaney and Rove, the Masters of Misinformation, are calling for exactly that, probably so they can cover their asses by claiming that at least we thwarted some plots. That's perfectly reasonable. It still doesn't explain why conservatives, who claim to be for "freedom" and not necessarily "equality," don't think it's reprehensible that we did this. As I pointed out to Mia's PT, the hard core Al Qaida types have goals that are so beyond the realm of reality (like remaking the entire planet as a backward-looking Caliphate) that they don't really care if they get tortured. All it does, ultimately, is make our so-called ideals look foolish. Mia's PT pointed out that we had Founders who believed in the freedom of individuals, which is a good thing, because most people today would trade freedom for security in a heartbeat. At least we could have the guts to admit it.

2. Why was there such a kerfuffle over Miss California's answer to the question about gay marriage? The last time I checked, we had something in this country called freedom of speech, so why are people jumping all over her for answering something truthfully? From what I've read about it, Ms. Prejean didn't say she wanted to slaughter all homosexuals or that they are an abomination or they should be rounded up and kept in camps, she simply said that she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. The pageant people foolishly let out that it was the reason she didn't win, which is idiotic, as it's a beauty pageant. You can think Ms. Prejean was misguided all you want, but she doesn't make policy, so who cares what she thinks? Why is no one bagging on Perez Hilton, who asked a person who attends San Diego Christian College such a loaded question?

Ms. Prejean, by the way, is a wholesome young lady who happens to like posing in bikinis:













Let's not hold that against her!

3. Recently in Arizona there's been a huge debate over speed cameras, which snap photographs of speeding cars. People have reacted antagonistically, leading to several people (including me) to think, "Maybe you shouldn't speed." Mia's PT, ironically (or perhaps not) enough, believes the speed cameras are a violation of the law because the tickets are not given by a lawfully appointed officer, but that's neither here nor there. Obviously they're in place to collect money for the state, and with the state in the financial difficulties it's in, I don't have a big problem with what is essentially a tax on people who speed. Some people have taken axes to the cameras and placed Post-It notes over the aperture in protest, but earlier this week, some dude pulled up next to an officer who was checking the cameras and shot him three times, killing him. As horrible as that is, people on the Arizona Republic's web site defended the killing, wondering why they should feel bad for some fascist. These are, presumably, the same people who want to round up every swarthy person and ship them to Guatemala when one illegal immigrant kills a cop, but they were defending some guy murdering someone in cold blood just because they might have to pay $200 for going 77 mph in a 65 mph-zone. I know the Internet is all about the freedom of anonymity, but that still disgusts me. It's one of the reasons why I am so open about everything on the Internet. I will never register for a web site under a pseudonym. You know who I am! The murder saddens me, but the reaction of some disgusts me.

4. Not really newsworthy, but we had our first 100-degree (Fahrenheit) day here on Tuesday. GOOD FUCKING TIMES!!!! Of course, the only thing that makes summer bearable, the pool, isn't quite warm enough to swim in. But it's getting there! So for now, I'm trapped in the house until the temperature falls (which it's supposed to do this weekend). 102 degrees in April. People wonder why I hate it here.

A few links to start the week

Every once in a while, I mourn the loss of my massive link-blogging posts. Boy, those were fun. I just don't have the time for it anymore. But I like reading weird stuff on the Internet, so I bring you shorter posts with links every so often. Enjoy!

When I want Olympic news, I go to With Leather. Among other stuff, they linked to this completely insane Craig Sager interview and this story about George Bush visiting with Olympic volleyball goddesses Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. In the first story, we get several classic answers by Sager, best known for wearing horrible sport jackets on the sidelines of NBA games. Here are some of the completely out-of-context answers:
"Well, have you seen the Red Foxes? Wait to see them. It's the Lithuanian dance team. The blondes?"
"I have a blonde fetish, and you don't find many blondes out here."
"I'm the one you should talk to when it comes to evaluating dance teams."
"And back when I did it, the mini-tramp was allowed in college ..."
"I haven't been off the mini-tramp."
"The only thing I can do is have this [belt] and have a matching thong. That's about the only thing I can do."
"I've been to probably 250 Hooters across the country and world. It's the only Hooters I've ever been to that didn't have any Bud Light or blondes. I was very disappointed."

Accompanying the second story is this photograph:

Yes, that's the leader of the free world slapping Misty May ... on the ass. Okay, so he's slapping her back tattoo. Still. That has to be the best picture of the year. I surely hope Tom has seen it.

In the odd but sad category, we have this site, which is interesting. The artist covered Footloose, of all soundtracks, in a bizarre way. Read about it at the site.

After that, if you want a quick laugh, check out the Muppets singing the Habanera from Carmen. Seriously. It's comedy gold!

So there you have it. A few links, just to let you know that I will never stop roaming the vast expanses of cyberspace to bring you the wonderful stuff that's out there! It's my mission!

"Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech."

That's what our president said to Pope Benedict XVI after his words at the White House a few days ago. I hope he was using "awesome" in its most specific form, as in something that inspires awe, but somehow I think he meant it in its colloquial form, as in "way cool."

January can't come soon enough, if you ask me.

News of the world angries up my blood

A couple of news stories from Thursday's Arizona Republic caught the wife's eye, and she pointed them out to me. And then I got angry.

The first is, of course, the abortion decision. I'm not going to write too much about it, because I'm sure others have done so and it's a "rare" form of abortion, but let's be honest: once the anti-abortion people gained the upper hand in the terminology wars by calling this a "partial-birth abortion," you knew it was getting banned at some point. Nobody cares to examine the procedure, and when it's called "partial-birth," people get visions of doctors sucking a newborn baby out of a womb and chopping its head off. Don't say they don't! What anti-abortion people (I refuse to call them pro-life, because they don't care about the babies once they're, you know, born) understand is the power of words, and once the opponents of a partial-birth abortion ban started calling it that, the battle was lost. The only thing people who are pro-choice can hope for now is that a blanket abortion ban doesn't get in front of the Supreme Court before a few of its current members die off or quit and that Bush is no longer around to appoint someone new. If it gets to this current court, Roe v. Wade is gone. The good news about that is that American women will all leave the workplace and raise big white families again, and the country will return to those idyllic days when women weren't running around murdering tiny clumps of tissue and causing all the ills of modern society. Won't that be nice? Remember before Roe v. Wade, when no children were ever beaten or sexually abused and the world was a better place because no women were making actual decisions? Good times.

The other story was a bit more interesting, just because it didn't make the front page. On page 8 of the front section was this story, which is just astonishing. I don't watch the news, so maybe this is a bigger story than I know, but let's just look at the headline: "White House pursued legal efforts to limit voter turnout in key states." Here's the first paragraph:

For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates.

Arrrrgggghhhh! What, indeed, the fuck? If you read the article, none of the dirty pool they have pulled is against the law, but (surprisingly) the Administration has claimed fears of voter fraud lead them to enact tougher laws, which almost always discriminate against the poor, who are more likely to vote Democrat (whether they should or not is incidental). Cases of voter fraud are very rare, but that hasn't stopped Bush and his cronies to use it to work things in their favor. Does this remind anyone of, maybe, the War on Terror™? This is just another underhanded, shitty thing for the party in power to do when they realized that their "message" wasn't resonating anymore because people didn't want to hear their shit. Krys was stunned this isn't getting more play, and so am I, because of the "liberal media." Oh, wait a minute - the media isn't liberal, they're just lapdogs for anyone in power, and right now that's a conservative. This kind of thing doesn't really surprise me anymore, but it does still piss me off. When is the revolution coming?

On the front page of that particular issue of the Republic is the story of Cho Seung Hui sending his video to NBC News. As I mentioned in my last post, I don't want to denigrate the memories of the dead, and what happened at Virginia Tech is a horrible tragedy. But why are they running big stories about a crazy man, plus showing a despicable picture of him holding two hand guns? As has been brought up before, what does this show all the other crazies out there? That they too can shoot up a school and get a front-page photograph! Sure, they'll be dead, but they're crazy - maybe that doesn't matter, as long as they get their fame! And, again, not to belittle the massacre, but both the abortion decision (which was on the front page) and the election shenanigans (which wasn't) affect far more people than the deaths in Blacksburg. I understand it's on the front page because it's a visceral story of a great tragedy, but down at the bottom of the first page is a story about John Edwards' haircut (I wish I was kidding) and at the top of the front page, above Cho's awful photograph, is a story about how NASCAR is trying to attract more female and minority fans (it's race week in Phoenix). That is, if you'll pardon my French, fucked up.

I just love to get reminded about what's important to a majority of people in this country: NASCAR and how much John Edwards pays for his haircuts. And we wonder why our country is in the shitter.

On a more positive note, if you haven't read my daughters' blog recently, I put up a nice post about Mia and the progress she's made over the past year. She's doing very well, and we have no reason to think she won't do better once she gets to kindergarten. So if you're interested, check it out.

Picking on the president is too easy

This is kind of mean, but what the hell:

Clay Aiken is in line to be named to the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. Now, as a parent of a child with an intellectual disability, I'm all for stuff like this, but come on, what did you think when you read that? Don't be shy!

Someone needs to explain this to me

This morning I was listening to my favorite radio station,¹ and Laura Ingraham was on. I can only listen to my favorite radio station for a few minutes at a time before my head explodes, so I had just turned it on and she and her guest were, predictably, whining about Democrats. They had a clip by Howard Dean and were talking about how the Democrats have made winning the War on Terror™ impossible.

My question is: for the past six years, a Republican has controlled the White House. Republicans have controlled the House and the Senate. Conservatives have, for the most part, controlled the Supreme Court. The heads of the CIA and FBI are Bush appointees. How, exactly, is it the Democrats' fault that we are not winning the War on Terror?™

Someone needs to explain this to me using simple words, because I'm just not getting it.

¹ Unfortunately, it's tough to show sarcasm when writing. But that's it, in case you're wondering.

The Injustice League

There's a kind of sad acceptance I feel with regard to the direction in which the country is moving. It has little to do with my anger at Bush and his cronies - they're just buboes on the body politic masking the real disease. We have reaches a point in this country where Money is God. We worship it, revere it, assign ridiculous value to those who have it, ignore those who don't. It's frustrating, because I have no time for utopian socialist visions in which we all give our money to the Central Committee and they redistribute it equally. As conservative commentators are so fond of pointing out, there's a difference between equality and liberty, and they'll take liberty, and in certain areas I'm inclined to agree with them. But as a society, we are becoming sicker and sicker with this strange lust for an ultimately ephemeral thing, and it does not look like it will ever change. We can blame Bush and Big Oil all we want, but the Democrats in Washington are the same way. Very rarely does a person not born of privilege make any kind of difference. Clinton, ironically, was not necessarily a privileged individual, and although he had plenty of failings, his refusal to join the Wealthy Club and Play By The Rules was not one of them - and he was excoriated for it. Say what you want about Clinton - and it will probably be true - but he did work for all Americans more often than he worked for the Rich. That would probably not be true of Al Gore (even though Gore would have been a better president than Bush) and certainly not of John Kerry (and between Bush and Kerry, it's probably a toss-up).

This divide between rich and poor is probably more pervasive in society today than racism, but it gets less attention (except from crazy left-wingers, who are promptly dismissed as socialist), mainly because it's easier to "spot" racism. If a white person treats a black person poorly, it's racist. Easy. Wealth cuts across racial lines, however. We hear about poor blacks attacking middle class blacks for "going white" because they have made money and adopted a "white" lifestyle. It's silly and uses the language of racism (by assigning a racial change to those blacks who have accomplished it) but it still speaks to a gap between the rich and poor in this country. There are not as many barriers as there once were to blacks or Hispanics becoming rich, but there are many barriers keeping poor people - black, brown, or white - from becoming rich. More importantly, the rich, who don't care who joins them as long as they get to keep their money, are much better protected in our society, and that's where the worship of money and the failure of the government becomes pronounced. This is apparent in many ways, but the incident that, for me, set me off, is a local one.

I doubt if it's been getting national attention, but this story has been big in Arizona for a while. The link is just the latest (and possibly last) in a series of articles about the story. It's a sad and disgusting little bit of Americana. Two camp counselors in Prescott pleaded guilty to assaulting 18 kids under their care. How did they do this? In a "hazing" ritual in which they shoved broomsticks into the buttocks of the kids, who were wearing underwear or other clothing. The two counselors, Clifton Bennett, 18, and Kyle Wheeler, 20, told the kids, aged 11 to 14, on the first day of camp that they would be punished for breaking the rules. "Punished" meant, apparently, being sodomized with broomsticks and, in the case of three boys, being choked by Wheeler until they passed out.

The case has gotten a lot of attention here not only for the horrible nature of the crime but because of who Clifton Bennett is. His father is the President of the Arizona Senate, Ken Bennett. So politics, and more importantly money, enters the picture.

Clifton Bennett will get about a month in jail, 200 hours of community service, and three years probation. Think about that for a minute. We have people languishing in maximum security prisons for smoking marijuana. Not selling marijuana, smoking marijuana. This kid admitted to assaulting 18 children, and he's getting a month in jail. The Yavapai County District Attorney, Sheila Polk, has been ripped for not prosecuting the case more aggressively, but she says there isn't enough evidence to charge them with a sexual assault. So ramming broomsticks up some kid's butt isn't sexual assault, it's just regular assault, and therefore the perpetrator gets a month in jail.

The statements by the judge and the defendants are pretty astonishing, too. Judge Thomas O'Toole said, "The evidence clearly shows that both defendants engaged in conduct that was callous and reckless," and then added, "It's fair to say that the conduct was out of character for these young men." But he did not classify the convictions as felonies. So, if you're in the mood to choke kids until they pass out or drive sticks into any orifice they have, feel free - it's a misdemeanor. The judge also said that the actions were "not intended to be criminal in nature." Well, shit, that makes it all right, then. When I blow up my neighbor's house because he won't stop driving his motorcycle up and down my street late at night, I can just say that my actions weren't intended to be criminal in nature. Can I help it if there are laws against it? That's not my problem, after all. These defendants seem reasonably smart. Did they not think, as they were choking kids, that maybe these actions could be seen as criminal? That's such a dumb statement by the judge I almost have to bang my head against the wall. Meanwhile, the defendants were contrite. How nice of them. Bennett said he didn't think him going to jail would satisfy the victims as much as his heartfelt remorse. Yeah, okay. I'm shocked that he would think that.

The victims and their families were less than pleased. Their parents say many have trouble sleeping and going to the bathroom since the assaults, and their grades have slipped. 13-year-old Zachary Motcheck, one of the victims, said, "It's unfair, and it's just because Bennett's dad is a senator." Ah, yes, the political connection. Sheila Polk said that at no time did the office of Senator Bennett call her to influence her one way or another. Well, of course she would say that. At the Yavapai County Government page, there's a link to a press release by Sheila Polk (it's a pdf file and for some reason I can't link to it) in which she responds to some of the criticism leveled against her. It's all well and good, but the point is not that she failed and the judge failed (she, of course, blames the judge for the sentencing). It's that both she and the judge are caught up in a criminal justice system that favors the rich and powerful. Clifton Bennett is a fine, upstanding son of a Senator who is planning to go on a Mormon mission soon. Polk says that the fact that he is planning this also had no influence, but who can really tell. The fact is, district attorney is an elective office. Judge is an elective office. It certainly can't hurt to allow the son of the Senate President off with a slap on the wrist, and Sheila Polk and Thomas O'Toole can blather on all they want about proper procedure, but the fact remains that this is a slap on the wrist. Yes, it's up to judge's discretion to set the punishment. Are you telling me that the judge put aside any thoughts of political advancement, his own prejudices toward "fine, upstanding, religious citizens" who had never done anything wrong before (that we know of) and wept like babies in the courtroom, and the power of the father of one of the defendants when he sentenced these kids? He's human, after all. I'm not necessarily blaming him for it, because everyone is influenced in this way, but it's sad that we have come to this, when who the person is or is related to is more important than the crime they committed. If Clifton Bennett was a nobody, I would almost bet he would be in jail for longer than a month.

Senator Bennett was at the courthouse last Friday. He "hustled his son through the rear door of the courthouse" and said Clifton had "made a heartfelt apology in court."

"We hope today will begin the healing process for everybody," he said, before adding: "How would you feel if your son was going to jail?" As someone pointed out in the opinion page a few days later, how would he feel if his son was the one who had been sodomized and choked and the criminal who did it was getting away with a slap on the wrist? If my son came to me and admitted he did this, of course I'd want him to stay out of jail, especially if I thought he was contrite, but at the same time I'd want to beat him myself because this is a horrible thing to do. Senator Bennett might not have used his influence, but because of who he is, his son got away with his crime.

This case is just a microcosm of what's happening in the U.S. today. You can argue it if you want, but I don't think it's really debatable that the rich and powerful get away with pretty much anything they want to. This is frustrating because the middle class keeps shrinking and the U.S. begins to resemble a Third World country more and more. We're not there yet, but we're on the path to it, and as those of us who aren't rich become more and more marginalized, it will just get worse and worse. The government should be there for those who don't have power, but it's not. That's why Bush is a failure - not because he's an idiot, but because he, like most presidents, sees the office as just a way to accrue power to himself and make his friends richer. Bush and his friends don't need to be richer. They need to look after the powerless. That doesn't mean throwing money at them like Democrats want, but it does mean helping them in any way they can. Trickle-down economies don't work. Developing systems by which the powerless can get true justice would be a start. But we're a long way from that, unfortunately.